Magic Moves Online

Gene Urban, the veteran magician who specialized in close-up tricks – the ones performed within inches of your eyes – has had to take a siesta from his weekly appearances at Satellite Wine Bar and the Magic Castle Cabaret. So he’s upped the ante online in terms of not only offering updated videos of his own feats on his website (somehow he shanghaied the generic domain name of https://santabarbaramagic.com) but also presenting particular performances by some of his favorite fellow fingers-are-faster-than-the-eye set. It seems you might have to be on his email list (sign up on his website) to get the right links, but we’ll clue you in on a couple of them, including Wayne Dobson’s Royal Variety Show (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAWi15MAOmo); Dani DaOrtiz, who Urban said is the answer to whether he still gets fooled, who stumped Urban at The Magic Castle in 2019. “He cleaned my clock, blew my mind and made me rethink reality,” Urban said (www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_1TUvTsgb8); and Hojin Yu, who brought Urban to tears with his World Championship Performance (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytRDyRvN6gk).